State Department

A Look Back at 2017: The Year in Youth Services It used to be easier to think back and recap a year. Now, between the tweets and the protests and the investigations and the bitmojis, one’s brain is so cloudy by late December it’s hard to make sense of it all.

Earlier this year, Ambassador Susan Jacobs retired from her post as special advisor for the State Department Office of Children’s Services (OCS), leaving the position she’d held for seven years vacant.

The Council on Accreditation (COA), the lone firm handling accreditation for international adoption agencies, has announced that it will break its contract with State due to recent changes in regulations. From a statement by the State Department: On October 6 … the Council on Accreditation (COA), the agency responsible to accrediting intercountry adoption agencies, informed the Department that it would be unable to perform its duties as an accrediting entity (AE) due to “unforeseen circumstances.”

The current State Department has developed policies that have been disastrous for children languishing in institutions abroad. There are many millions of such children, some of them orphaned, some abandoned by or removed from their birth parents.

Disability Rights International (DRI) is a non-governmental organization that promotes human rights for people with disabilities. Children in institutional care, such as orphanages, quickly become disabled, so it is no surprise that DRI has announced that its newest project is the Worldwide Campaign to End the Institutionalization of Children.